Lev Grossman - The Magician King - Chapter 17

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CHAPTER 17

“Thomas will be so disappointed,” Poppy said. “He missed everything.” She sat glumly on a sail locker on the deck of the Muntjac, wrapped in a rough ship’s blanket. Her curly hair was flat from the salt water. She’d tried to swim away, back to Earth, back to Thomas’s little-boy bedroom, but when she saw that she had no shot she stroked back to the bed instead, and they’d hauled her dripping back up onto it to await rescue. She was a strong, easy swimmer, which was somehow not surprising. The bed, while a top-quality bed that contained a fair amount of actual bona fide wood — Thomas’s parents had spared no expense — was only so-so as a raft and had trended downward rapidly as the bedclothes and then the mattress soaked through and lost their buoyancy. Josh sat heavily on it, crisscross applesauce, resigned, Buddha going down with the ship, while the bed gradually swamped, and the cold seawater lapped up over his knees. But the Muntjac was already in view by then, sheering keenly through the waves toward them, the force of a fresh wind setting it at a rakish angle. Its sails — his sails, Quentin’s sails, with the pale blue ram of Fillory — stood out in taut, proud curves. The power of it, the color, the solidity, the reality of it, were almost too thrilling. A tiny action-figure sailor was already at the railing, pointing in their direction. Quentin hadn’t for a second doubted that the Muntjac would be there. It seemed like years since he’d seen it. They had come to take him home. As it bore down on them he’d had a moment of worry: what if centuries had passed, what if Eliot and Janet really were dead, and the Muntjac was the last survivor of the Brakebills era, and he was going home to a court of strangers? But no, there was Bingle at the railing, looking just as he always had, ready to haul his royal body back on board and get back to guarding it. Though even as they were toweling off, and hugging each other, and making introductions, and securing fresh clothes and hot tea, he could see that not everything aboard the Muntjac was exactly as he’d left it. The ship was older. Not that it was shabby, but it had aged, settled into itself some. What had been glossy — the paint on the railings, the varnish on the deck — was now rubbed to matte. Ropes that had once been bright and prickly were now smooth and soft and dun-colored from having been run through blocks over and over again. Also Quentin was no longer in charge of the Muntjac. Eliot was. “Where have you been!” he said, when he was done embracing Quentin. “You ridiculous, ridiculous man. I was starting to think you were dead.” “I was on Earth. How long have we been gone?” “A year and a day.” “God. It was only three days for us.” “That makes me two years older than you now. How do you think that makes me feel? How was Earth?” “The same. It ain’t Fillory.” “Did you bring me back anything?” “A bed. Josh. An Australian girl named Poppy. I didn’t have a lot of time. And you know how hard you are to shop for.” Quentin was still in a euphoric state, but the adrenaline was wearing off, and his eyes felt sandy and jet-lagged. Twenty minutes ago it had been midnight, the tail end of a long and arduously alcoholic party, and now it was early afternoon again.